


Bad Idea

by linkzeldi



Category: Durarara!!, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tokyo Ghoul, Crossover, F/M, Tokyo Ghoul x Durarara!!, crossover fic, ghoul au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:18:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: Izaya Orihara loves humans, he loves them so much he'd even eat them.A one shot alternate universe look at the 16th ward of Tokyo, Ikebukuro, if it existed in the world of Tokyo Ghoul. In a world without fairies, vampires, or demon swords somehow the legends of the headless rider persist.





	Bad Idea

Ghoulification was a topic of interest between three competing research groups. The first, Nebula, based largely in america with enough economic clout to boss around several other well known american companies. The second, Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, was mostly a normal business with experiments run mostly on the down low as of recently. It used to be an economic powerhouse and family run business that competed on the level of the Tsukiyama conglomerate, or the Togami corporation, but the son of the family and his wife set to inherit the business made a fatal error that caused the stock to plummet. The business was instead handed to a shrewd uncle who largely played it safe causing the business to survive but slowly diminish in importance. Then there was the third, the sunlit society which existed as a medical and education group, but really was set up by the Washuu and by extension V, as a part of their century’s long effort to erase the barrier between human and ghoul (selfishly so, for the sake of their rich main household).  
  
Which meant one research conglomerate which held undue power for over a century and was mainly based in america, and another research conglomerate which held undue power for over a century and was mainly based in japan were both competing with Yagiri pharmaceuticals in the middle of them. It felt like two great lions were playing tug of war with a recently killed corpse.

They might not have cooperated if it were not for their competing interests. Nebula sought the supernatural to quantify it, to put the fantastic power of ghouls and other such creatures it claimed existed in scientific terms. While it participated in the same experimentation, their interests were truly only medical.  
  
Whereas the Sunlit Society, founded by the Washuu, only cared about taking ghouls apart piece by piece in order to weaponize them. They had already annexed several other companies, such as sphinx for their elaborate efforts. They might have tried to annex Nebula as well, but the head staff of Nebula was entirely humans, so, their usual game of pointing out ghoul targets and eliminating them bore them no fruit. If the Washuu were not so arrogant, they might have simply noticed that Nebula employed people like Shingen Kisitani.  
  
Both businesses were interested in the floundering Yagiri pharmaceuticals for one reason, as they both offered overly generous terms, with promises of no restructuring, or layoffs, and enough money to basically resurrect a company that had been dead in the water on one stipulation: They would be given access to Lab 6, and all of the materials therein would be considered entirely under their jurisdiction.  
  
There was only one interesting thing in lab 6 though. The head of a ghoul that somehow still remained alive, and continually producing kagune fluid and RC Cells despite being severed from its body. That same head taken as a souvenir from Ireland 20 years ago, and used as a family heirloom since then.

Yagiri Pharmaceuticals had been studying that head to no avail. Their series of experiments on the head not only was a drain of resources, but it also got them involved in the black market, and a string of recent kidnappings.  
  
When Namie Yagiri returned to the office, she was alerted by her uncle over the phone that in the end Nebula won out the bidding war over their company. She had called her uncle to beg for his assistance after having several of her own employees that she treated like the henchmen as the villain in a third rate anime taken out by strangers in black suits that seemed to be around every corner.

Her uncle reassured her that it was better this way, because the Sunlit Society tended to kill those who did not abide by their strict wishes, whereas Nebula offered long and comfy contracts to coerce people into following their orders.

In Namie’s mind the events of the past few days clicked together, she thought she had been protecting her brother, but the kidnappings, and the surgery with Mika who belonged to a wealthy family rather than being homeless or a vagrant kicked up enough of a fuss as to draw V’s attention.

If they could not buy the head peacefully, then they could kill her for the sake of public peace and simply take the head for themselves.

Well, then the choice was obvious. They were never after her, or her company to begin with, only the head. She could surrender the head and guarantee the safety of not only herself but her entire staff.

She did not even like the head. In fact she hated her, the head that was named Celty. She was incredibly jealous of the head, and had been since she was ten years old and her brother had first laid eyes upon it in her uncle’s study.

Any normal human being would have thrown away the head right there, but Namie was not a normal human being, nor did she have normal priorities. She needed the head, because she knew in her heart it was the only thing that would tie her to her brother. If she surrendered it, then her brother would get himself killed chasing after it in either Nebula or V’s hands. If she gave the head back to it's proper owner, her owner would be restored and her brother might go mad and die from lack of love, or fall even more in love with the head's complete form. 

If she had the head held close to her chest though, then the one her brother would be chasing would be her at least.

_I don’t care about the world. I don’t even care about myself, but Seiji… Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji, Seiji…._

Her uncle had been left on speaker. Then, she pulled the entire phone out and threw it through the window shattering it. It was just as well, as she heard the sounds of a break in in another part of the building. She grabbed the head from the desk, and quickly stuffed its container in an inelegant looking bag.

Namie held it close to her chest, just as she thought she would before jumping straight through the window. That was the second story, she supposed after pulling herself off the ground that that must have hurt, but she felt no pain at all.  
  
She could rely on neither family, nor business ties to see her through this. The mob would have no interest in a ghoul head as they tended to avoid ghouls in general. Other lab companies were likely to be on the sunlit society’s payroll, and if they weren’t she might lose control of the head. Well, she had known about this from the start. She hated the whole world except for Seiji after all. It was a fact that she accepted in a cold manner, much like everything else she did. When in desperate situations, people who had few options almost always mulled them over to the point of madness believing somehow they would find the better of the two options.  
  
Namie escaped that logical pitfall entirely, as she disappeared into the crowds of Ikebukuro having already made up her mind to take the worst option possible.  
  
The information broker looked over the a freshly printed out piece of paper. “I don’t understand, Yagiri-san, wasn’t this list I sold you of potential kidnap targets not enough for you to conduct your business safely?”

She stood there, clutching the bag which contained the head still. She hadn’t noticed until just now that in her rush to run away, she had thrown it inside Seiji’s backpack that he left in her office. It smelled lightly of Seiji too, she tried to focus on that as a thoroughly unpleasant man in front of her continued to lecture her.

“This is the first time we met in person you know. Over the phone and in emails, with the curt way you talked I really assumed you were some kind of cool beauty who was always composed. Your current image betrays the image you like to project entirely…”

He said, leaning over her and picking up a twig that had fallen on her shoulder. In her running for her life, and taking several cabs, and the largely complicated route to get her, she had no care at all for how the desperation had ruined her physical appearance. She had shed her lab coat that she always wore, and underneath was only a thin green sweater that was reduced to rags, and her usually long straight black hair had become split at several ends.

Namie Yagiri did have an amazing body on most occasions, but the way this man eyed her right now, he seemed to be staring lustfully at the disorder that had taken over her appearance. If she looked as she normally did, she could only imagine his disinterest, he might have been having this entire conversation paying more attention to the game he had set up on a nearby chessboard.  
  
Speaking of that, Izaya stopped looking at her and moved three steps over to flip over an othello piece. “I worked really hard for that list you know, but then you had to be stupid and screw it up. All for the sake of your brother’s twisted love, or was it your twisted love for your brother.”

Namie said nothing. She knew types like Izaya liked to hear themselves talk more than they cared for the input of others.

“Ah, I captured this piece. Hey, Namie. Do you believe in the undead? What about psychopomps? Ways of cheating death?"

“When our team noticed how illogical it was for a ghoul head to still be alive even after being severed from it’s body, we researched into several mythological avenues but we produced no solid findings.”  
  
“Do you care that much about the supernatural, or urban legends like ghouls in the first place?”

Namie shook her head. A moment ago she was wordless, but Izaya had a bad habit of drawing conversation out of people. “I’ve never cared about ghouls at all. If the CCG killed all of them, I’d hardly bat an eye. It’s not like I hate them either, though.”

Izaya smiled at that. It was the first time that Namie realized how bad a smile could be, as Izaya Orihara smiled as placeholder, a mask to conceal what he was thinking underneath. “I agree, ghouls are pretty much worthless. The only thing they care about is power, food, and survival, they might as well be animals. It’s only natural to prefer humans, their privileged lives lead them to worry about so many different things. It renders them so unpredictable. Like you, Namie. You’ve spent your whole life where you have food and money all taken care for, fretting about whether or not your brother would love a severed head over you. You’re just another of those spoiled humans who think they’re owed love…”

He was analyzing her once again. However, she was not prepared for what he would say next.  
  
“You have every right to think that way though! Humans should be given love! They’re so wonderful! That’s why I love you so much, Namie!”

Ah… Nobody had ever… the words she so desperately wanted to hear from Seiji, came from that man’s mouth instead. He must have read that off of her face instantly, as her momentary flinch had caused him to begin to laugh.

She dropped her guard down entirely, wondering what he would do next after such a bold declaration. He moved into her space detecting the opening. She closed her eyes, just for a moment. However, Izaya’s hands did not reach out for her.

He merely stole the bag from her hands, and moved to the desk. He unzipped it, and then pried out the head from within. Almost immediately, he removed the head from the tank, and let it’s severed neck rest on his shoulder instead as he gripped it by the back of the head. Both he and the head turned to look out the window as Namie opened her eyes once more. “Here’s my theory, I believe it’s possible for an absurdly powerful ghoul to cheat death. After that point, they’d effectively become gods of death, able to kill others without dying themselves. That’s the person I believe this head originally belonged to. If the head is still alive, then the body must be alive somewhere too, existing and living separately.”

Namie listened to his whole ramble, but had absolutely nothing to say in response. “Yeah.. so… what if it is that way?”  
  
“If there was a being like that, then there certainly could be another. I’ve read reports of a ghoul whose abilities surpassed that of a god of death. Except, they’re walking around with a head still. It terrifies me to know that there’s someone so powerful they could kill me in an instant if they wanted to.” He downcast his eyes for a moment in a way that made Namie suspect that despite all of his grandstanding, that Izaya genuinely meant that sentiment to some extent. “In that case don’t you think our friend here would be excellent insurance to keep on hand. I’m sure if the head were ever truly damaged by a being of equal magnitude, the body would appear and would have no choice but to protect it as it cried out in pain.”

As Izaya explained his grand battle plan, he was shaking slightly. Namie looked at him, she truly looked at him in that moment, and realized the fear she had felt as she fled V and watched the world of her last twenty years or so collapse upon her. Izaya was shaking with the same fear. However, she could not tell if it was fear that shook him, or anticipation of that fear.

“So, all you really want to say right now is you’re just protecting yourself then.” Namie finally found her words, as she coldly summarized their entire conversation.  
  
Izaya gave a shrug, bobbing the head on his shoulder slightly. He removed it and put it back in the tank.  
  
“I want to protect you too, Namie. I know I lie a lot, but I’m not lying this time. You’re headstrong, you only rely on yourself, you want to impose your twisted love on your brother and don’t care if it means manipulating that oh so precious brother to achieve it. Those are all of the reasons that I love you, so I’ll protect you.”  
  
Another declaration of love. Namie bit her lip again. She had expected Izaya Orihara, the inforation broker with a tendency to screw others over to cut her a shrewd deal, not ramble on about gods of death, and then give her declarations of love.

“When you say you love me, you just mean as a human being right. You’d never mean to say you love me as an individual.” She stated, once again coldly summarizing his rambling words.

“Of course! You know, you’re not as much of a self absorbed idiot as I thought you were. It turns out you can care about things besides your brother.” He smiled and then put the head’s case back in the bag, slinging it over her shoulder.  
  
“Well anyway let’s go. There’s a small chance you could have led V here, so I’m instead going to terminate the contract with this office building and open a new one at the beginning of next month. Before you ask it’s fine, everything I work on is a burner, and I keep the most important information in my head. For tonight though we’re going to stay in one of my apartments.”  
  
Namie nodded. She had no choice but to rely on him after all. She had even relinquished the head to him as payment for all of this when her bank accounts were frozen. She did not think too hard about the details he described until they had already reached his apartment.  
  
“Here, change into this. My mother gave it to me to give to my sister’s in a couple of years but they’re still too short for it.” He said, offering her a new and expensive looking box. She opened it to see a set of pajamas inside.

She immediately began to pull off her sweater. She had it over her head when Izaya finally cleared his throat. “Oh, sorry…” She said, the first and last time she would ever apologize to that man. “I’m used to sharing a living space with my brother.”

“You’ve somehow made it even more awkward.”  He said, with a laugh as she quickly retreated to the bathroom.  
  
Now she was in his apartment, wearing his clothes. Only now to her infinitely naive mind when it came to dealing with other people beside Seiji, did Namie put two and two together. She leaned out the bathroom door and stared at him. “Is there a reason we had to stay at your apartment?”

“What are you implying?” Izaya answered her question with a question, how rude.  
  
“You’re not going to demand anything besides the head as protection for me.”  
  
Izaya laughed at that. “If I wanted something like that, there was no need to incur the unnecessary risk of hiding from the Sunlit Society and Nebula.” He smiled at her again, but it was nothing like the terrifying smile she had seen earlier. There was nothing hidden behind his words, he could tell. “This is because you dropped on my doorstep without warning. From tomorrow onwards, we can switch between my three apartments so that we never have to share the same living spaces and you’ll only have to tolerate me during office hours.”  
  
“Office hours?” She questioned.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I was getting to that part. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Izaya had kept his word about everything so far, and even provided her these comfortable pajamas to wear but Namie knew it was better to only rely on him for protection and nothing else. She would think more about it later though, she was already getting tired. From his words, and from what she could discern about him she knew he had absolutely no interest in her as an individual, and that extended to her body.

He rolled a bed out on the floor, and rolled another out for her. He explained briefly, that this parents were more traditional than most, and he came from an old family despite his funny sounding name. This was an old habit that he found difficult to shake off. He even offered to unroll his bedroll in another room, or at least farther away from her.

“Do whatever you want, I’m indifferent to your existence.” Namie said coldly, as she stepped into the bed and turned away from him.  
  
“It’s because I’m not your precious Seiji, right?” Izaya asked her. He received no response at all.  
  
Namie realized, he would continue to analyze her like that as long as she breathed the same air as him. Throughout her entire life, nobody had made an attempt to understand her. Except for her uncle who only saw her talents to be used as a business asset. These twisted feelings she kept deep inside her heart, she thought they would remain unspoken desire forever.  
  
Izaya however, spoke about them plainly, and threw them in her face again and again. Not out of malice, he was just genuinely curious about her, how she would feel, how she would think, and most importantly how she would react.  
  
That was somehow worse though. She would prefer to be ignored, or even mocked further and called disgusting. She wanted to just forget about Izaya. It should have been easy, as the faces that belonged to other people, her own uncle, her parents who had coldly divorced each other years ago, slipped from her mind because they did not belong to her precious brother Seiji.  
  
However, when she closed her eyes she saw Izaya again. She saw the terrifying way he smiled, she felt some kind of desire to know what he was hiding under that smile. _Izaya, Izaya,_ he had just been a voice on a phoneline, or even words on a computer screen before this point, but meeting him was like a chemical reaction. The moment she saw him in the flesh, she could not revert to her previous state of being. I _zaya, Izaya, Izaya_ , she covered her ears, but could not stop hearing that name.  
  
Suddenly, his voice spoke up, barely a whisper but she heard it crisp and clear. “Hey… can you tell me your name again?”

“You went out of your way to provide protection for a person whose name you didn’t remember anymore?”

“I toss away all unnecessary information. I told you, I have to remember everything that’s important.”

Oh, she was unnecessary before but now she was important.  
  
“Besides, doesn’t helping someone but not remembering their name sound like me?”

“It sounds exactly like you.” Namie bit her lip for a moment, since she was starting a new life she fully considered giving a fake name. Even if he would find out her real name on his own merits soon enough, it would be fun to force him to go through that extra effort. “Yagiri… Yagiri Namie then…” The moment that she stopped biting down hard on her lip though, the name slipped out without her even realizing it.  
  
“Orihara Izaya to you then. I’ll call you Namie from now on whether you want me to or not, so feel free to call me Izaya.”

“Why would I do something like that? When worm, or insect, seems more appropriate. Or maybe mole.”  
  
“Why mole?”  
  
“They burrow underneath the ground. It’s something that would make you lower than dirt.”

Izaya laughed at that, of course.  
  
She wanted to refer to him mentally as some form of insect, but the name stayed in her mind: _Izaya, Izaya, Izaya…_

\---

Namie had been mentally preparing herself for all kinds of terrible jobs that Izaya might force her to work while in hiding with him. It turned out he had the worst possible option prepared for her from the start.  
  
She became his secretary.

What exactly the secretary of an information broker did was still vague to her, after Izaya had taken the time to explain her duties, and what her pay would be like. She actually made more money now living in hiding and worked far less than she had at Yagiri pharmaceuticals.

Some days she organized a schedule for him, took calls, and took notes like a normal secretary would. Some days it felt like she was being paid to simply sit there with him and listen as he ranted. Others, she would welcome the men he was selling information to, but be asked to wait outside for privacy reasons.

“I trust you of course, Namie, but that doesn't mean our clients do.”  
  
“I would be more comfortable if you didn’t trust me, to be honest.” Namie responded coldly.  
  
Just as he had promised too, their personal and professional lives did not become mixed even though he could have easily made it so considering it was his apartments she rotated into while on the run.  
  
The only thing personal he asked was when he asked her to run errands for him. She could have refused, but Namie actually liked to do these domestic types of tasks. When she was younger she focused on cultivating this part of herself to make herself the perfect caretaker for Seiji. Even though she knew these would go entirely to waste on Izaya, it was still fun for her to do.  
  
He asked her for grocery shopping at first. She would restock the fridges in his house without looking too closely. She noticed on the bottom shelves of his fridges, several rows of tupperware containers that smelled like raw meat, with “Do not touch, Mairu and Kururi” written on them in black permanent marker.  
  
Namie had not been tempted to look at all, but she did idly ask Izaya about it one day. He responded with his usual smile, “They’re just cut up human bodies from Neets who agreed to suicide pacts with me. Most of the time I convince them not to kill themselves, but when I fail I collect them so they don't go to waste at least. It’s a hobby of mine, you probably wouldn’t understand.”

She did not know if he was lying or telling the truth, but chose to assume he was just joking and saying something provocative to mess with her. She thought that was much more likely than Izaya being honest at least.  
  
“Why do they say do not touch if you don’t care about sharing what they are?”  
  
“You think I’m lying… Hmm, have you ever heard of the tale of eros and psyche. It’s about a woman who married what she thought was a monster, and was forbidden from ever trespassing upon certain boundaries. As long as she followed those rules though, she would be cared for and live with all of her needs taken care of in a palace.”  
  
“You’re right, sharing a life with you is a little bit like marrying a monster.”  
  
“No, that’s not the point I was trying to make…” Whenever Izaya was on the losing end of one of their bouts of banter, his voice would trail off and he would pout like this. Turning away from her and pretending to return to his work. Usually immediately afterwards as a form of revenge, he’d come up with some new annoying task for her.

After that conversation she started shopping for his clothes as well. He had three apartments worth of closets to fill, and apparently kept ruining his good clothes in fights against some guy named Shizuo.  
  
At the bottom of the list he asked for underwear, black, tight and sexy. She decided to go for white, plain, and loose instead knowing the request was likely put there just to mess with her.

Even though they never ended up in the same apartment again after that first night, Izaya had a terrible habit of working late. He would ask her to call his sisters and tell them he would not be home that night. Then ask her to cook something for the both of them.

Though often, she only made stew, or the most basic of things thrown together from the food supplies he kept in his office, every time she finished Izaya would stop whatever he was working on so intently and sit down to eat with her. He always chewed his food slowly as if he would savor it. He made long conversation giving her criticism about how her food tasted. Namie threatened the next time she did something like this, she would just shove it down his throat and not give him the chance to play food critic.

“Oh, but you’re still going to cook for me though? How reliable of you, Namie.”  
  
“If you say something like you’d make a good wife next, I’m going to sue you for sexual harassment.”  
  
“Why would I ever say something like that? A girl who only lusts after her brother would be a terrible wife, and a curse on any man who married her.”  
  
She wanted to spit at him when he said that, even if it was objectively true.  
  
Her life with Izaya was endlessly frustrating, and empty without Seiji in it, but at the same time it was filled with a peace she had never known before. Attaining peace while on the run with several major corporations after her head both figuratively and literally.  
  
She always balked at Izaya and considered him mad, but perhaps she was just as mad as Izaya. That was the only comparison to Izaya she would suffer through though, and she hoped she would forget she had even had that thought by the next morning.

The next morning though, as if responding to her wishes finally her peaceful life with Izaya seemed to come to an end.  
  
It all started when she forgot her umbrella after leaving the office. She knew it would be bad luck for two reasons, one because it was raining and two because it meant that she could not cover her face when she took one of her three predetermined routes home.

Just as the rain had started to soak into her sweater, a limousine had pulled up next to her. “Do you want a ride home, miss?” The man offered her in a neutral sounding voice. 

  
Namie did not even recognize the voice, until she turned her gaze slightly towards him. “Uncle?”

“We never got to finish our last conversation. It’s rude to hang up on the phone, especially with your elders you know.” At that moment, the limousine doors busted open and men, just like the men that Namie had once commanded filed out. They were in black suits, and she realized in that moment that her uncle probably had not sided with Nebula on that day after relinquishing his company to them.

“I don’t have the head on me, killing me is pointless. You’ll lose your one source of information.” Namie said immediately, taking a defensive step back. The moment she did though, her back collided with a man approaching her from behind.  
  
“We know that. We’re not going to kill you at all. We’ll capture you, and then make you watch as we capture your little brother and wait until you feed us the information itself.”

“Seiji…” She said. Then, in a moment of relief she realized they still did not know she was working for Izaya. Before her relief could last long, she heard the familiar footsteps of a man far too light on his feet.  
  
In the rain he had his hood pulled over his head, and underneath that he was wearing a red bandana that covered half of his face, and looked almost cartoonishly large. He looked like some mockery of a shonen hero that had shown up to save her. “Ahaha, I was waiting for something like this. To think I only came here to give you the umbrella you forgot, good fortune really does love me! I wanted to see what kind of face you’d make when you were saved by somebody you hated like me!”

Izaya seemed to be in absolute delight over her predicament. “You ass, I don’t need your help.” She said, as one man was already twisting her arms behind her back.

“Who is that? Nevermind, I don’t care about her cocky boyfriend just shoot him.”

One of the men in black coats did something that almost never happened in movies, and immediately drew out a gun and shot Izaya square between the eyes. His hood flew off of his head and he himself dramatically fell backwards.

For a moment Namie genuinely believed it, and she could not put into words the sensation of her chest twisting into knots. Then suddenly that feeling itself stopped, as Izaya stopped falling. He caught himself, and then like a possessed person rising from the dead stood all the way back up moving his body from an impossible angle. Then he dug into his forehead, and grabbed the bullet and dropped the crumpled piece of metal on the ground. 

  
Namie did not really understand what she saw, but she supposed a frustrating man like Izaya would never die that easily. He flicked his hand, and from his sleeve he caught a knife. When he unfolded the blade, it glowed a bright red.

Izaya had fought several times before with a monster named Shizuo Heiwajima, so perhaps it made sense why he seemed to handle these half dead looking men in black suits so well. He aimed not to kill, but rather to sever their tendons. When he finished, they would crumple on the ground in front of him, bleeding from key areas, like puppets whose strings had been cut. Soon, only Izaya, her uncle, and herself who had stopped to watch caught up in all of this were left standing.

Her uncle realizing the tables had turned, immediately turned coward. “HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY, ANYBODY HELP ME!” He cried out, like he was the one being accosted by a dangerous man holding a knife.  
  
Just at the moment where Izaya felt the most triumphant though, suddenly his moment of playing hero came crashing down on him. Quite literally, as from the sky a sign post flew like a spear and impaled him straight through the gut. Izaya looked down, taking a moment to register the blow as he spit blood. “Shizu-cha-” he managed to get out before the beast roared behind him.

“IZAAAAAYAAAAA-KUN. I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU NEVER TO HARASS ANYBODY IN IKEBUKURO AGAIN! I’LL KILL YOU THIS TIME.”

Izaya grabbed at the pole sticking through him, and in a sudden and impressive feat of strength he pulled it out of his wound. He stumbled one more step forward, but any attempt he could make to run away from Shizuo was cut short by his own legs giving out from under him. “You really do ruin everything, Shizu-chan.” He muttered as his eyes closed. 

  
Before he could make contact with the concrete though, he landed on something soft instead. Namie had finally decided to do something, primarily so they would be even and therefore Izaya could not gloat about this the following morning.

She slung him around her shoulder, just as Shizuo caught up with them. “Oh shit, is he okay?” Shizuo asked, noticing Izaya’s bleeding. 

  
Namie did not answer him at all. She walked forward dragging Izaya’s feet, leaving behind both her uncle and Shizuo Heiwajima, neither of which she cared about all that much. She took him to the nearest of his three apartments, and immediately grabbed a bedroll and unrolled it on the floor for him.  

The next moment she tossed his body which she had left leaning against a wall, on there a little too carelessly.

“I worked in a medical lab before this, I’m more used to cutting people up but I know enough to stop the bleeding. If you make it through the night we can call Shinra in the morning.” She had gotten close enough to learn the name of that eccentric doctor he often talked to and smiled while talking about.

She peeled his coat off of him, and his sleek black shirt as well with little resistance. She noticed immediately that despite all of the wounds he had received from Shizuo, there was not a single scar on his body, and he looked remarkably fit.

Perplexing thing upon perplexing thing, all added up in her mind. She still had not figured out how exactly he survived a bullet to the head relatively unscratched. Her hand went to his face, and she pushed back his hair, only to feel that there was no wound at all on his forehead and any blood left was dried and caked on now, like it had been smeared there rather than being bled from a wound.

She was a scientist still. She should have put it together by now. Perhaps there was something blinding her. Usually it was Seiji, but this entire time with Izaya laying horribly wounded in front of her she had not thought of him once. _Izaya, Izaya, Izaya_ … Why was she like this? Perhaps it was not her parents at all, perhaps she had been born this way. Maybe a completely normal family environment that had nothing to do with pharmaceuticals and severed heads would have produced the same exact person, and she’d get just as controlling over her brother’s first living breathing human girlfriend.

Even in that situation, like many of the desperate, needy girls that seemed to flock around him, she would have fallen into the arms of Izaya Orihara either way.

If there was a thing such as destiny, at least it would spite the man named Izaya Orihara who enjoyed human free will so much. 

  
Namie had caught herself holding his wound together with her bear hands to stop the bleeding though, and only Izaya finally speaking up broke her out of her trance. “N..no good. Just.. leave me. I’ll be better in the morning with you.”

“You’ll die, idiot!”

“Oh, are you going to say something corny like ‘I’d be sad if you died.’ If you chose now to suddenly develop feelings for me Namie, that’d be so typical I’d lose interest-” He was stopped by Namie grabbing his lips and forcing them shut with a pinch of her fingers. 

  
“Listen you, there’s no practical reason for me to want you to die if you’re the one currently helping me hide from people after my head, and you still haven’t signed my last paycheck.”

Izaya laughed, even though the shaking of his sides physically hurt him. She removed her fingers from his mouth, and went to holding is wound shut with her hands again. 

  
“I won’t die…” he said softly.  
  
“You’ll bleed out. Trust me I know more than you, I’m used to working with human bodies after all-”

  
“So am I.”  
  
“I don’t mean just metaphorically.”  
  
“I wasn’t talking in metaphors…” He shook his head slowly. “Namie, please… I’m so hungry, and you there covering yourself in my own blood is making it worse.”  
  
That was the first and last time she would ever hear the word please uttered by Orihara Izaya. Namie, still confused mumbled a broken reply. “How can you be hungry… we just… an hour ago…” She remembered the two of them sharing one of their usual dinners, and Izaya complaining and insulting her hard work as usual.

She wanted to be free from his presence more than anything else, but she did not possibly think at the time that those days might end. She had been in denial of the obvious for too long though, and then suddenly like the flip of a switch Namie was no longer above Izaya and instead had been thrown to the ground. Izaya’s body arched over hers. His face which looked pale and on the brink of death a moment ago, had swollen veins. His eyes were a bright red and pitch black. He was drooling, while at the same time blood dripped out of his mouth.  
  
“Oh… Izaya, you’re a ghoul.” She said in a matter of fact voice. All of the details which refused to connect finally did. It made sense, his insistence on eating in front of her, the way he always criticized her food and elaborately described the taste, his love of humanity, all of it an act to make up for a fundamental insecurity he could never change about himself.  
  
“It’s so good that I kept you around. A tasty little morsel always within an arm’s reach.” Izaya said, his voice shaking with emotion as he was crazed from hunger. It was the narrative the CCG provided her when she was trained in the basics of ghoul science. Ghouls would pretend to be human for sometimes years at a time only to suddenly turn face and murder their prey without any emotion.

“You don’t mean that. You’re only seeing that to see how I would react.” Namie said coldly, not even bothering to look afraid.

Izaya’s face relaxed slightly. “You never give me what I want, what a frustrating woman.That’s fine though… I’d rather starve than…kill a human with my own two hands."

"That being said you don't mind if they die, right?" Namie answered him coldly once more.  Izaya was a ghoul, however Izaya was also still Izaya which in many ways made him much worse than a ghoul. Finding out he was a ghoul was not the shock it should have been, but she felt no desire to embrace him and tell him that she accepted every part of him either. Instead she drove her knee up between his legs as hard as she could. “Get! Off of me!” She said.  
  
Immediately, Izaya obeyed her with a squeak and rolled over. He no longer knew which part of him hurt worse. Namie however, quickly pulled herself off the ground. “You got blood on my new sweatshirt.” She muttered before leaving the room. A moment later, she returned with one of the marked containers that sat on the bottom of his fridge. “So at the time, you weren’t lying to me.”

“Why would I? Sometimes the truth is harder to believe than a lie…”

“There’s no reason to take a bite out of me either way, so I don’t know why you were worrying about it besides being your normal dramatic self. Just eat this meat.”  
  
“Cook it for me.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Feed it to me, aaaaah.”  
  
Namie Yagiri’s eyebrow twitched. It was becoming a more and more common gesture around Orihara Izaya. In the next moment, she had grabbed the raw meat out of the container with her bare hands, and was shoving it down his throat. He choked on it, and threatened to spit some of it back up, but she gave him an angry glare and he swallowed.

When he was finished with his meal, the sides of his body began to stitch themselves back together. Namie watched, still leaving his shirt off, with an idle and scientific curiosity. She sat there, cross legged, almost looking like a polite child waiting to ask a question.  
  
“Hmm…” Izaya finally muttered an inquisitive tone at her.  
  
“If you’re a ghoul, then how come you always rely on that knife. Why didn’t you just use a kagune back there?”  
  
“I… I can’t produce a kagune.”  
  
“Oh.” She wondered if she had said something insensitive. Then she realized she didn’t care at all. “So when you’re waving around that quinque are you compensating for something?”

“Compensating?”  
  
“You know when guys with small dicks by big cars. Hey, by the way do you own a car Izaya?”

Izaya grumbled. “You’re only winning our current round of banter because I’m recovering from being half dead.”

“Sure, sure.” Namie said, waiting to watch him pout. Instead though, he rolled away and looked elsewhere.  
  
“It’s not compensating or anything. It’s not like I hate myself either. I just genuinely love humans, alright?” It seemed important to him that she understand that, or at least understand it on his terms. She made a mental note to use that fact against him. But… some other time, later, not now.

“Do you have pajamas in this apartment still?”  
  
“Yeah, they should be in the closet. I don’t have any of my sisters or mother’s pairs around though.”  
  
“That’s okay, I’ll just wear yours. My body isn’t that womanly. I used to wear my-”  
  
“Please stop right there for the sake of my ears.”

Namie shrugged. Then she pulled her green sweater over her head once more. This time, rather than clear his throat, Izaya stayed quiet. Perhaps because if he moved suddenly he might reopen his old wounds. That was the reason… yeah. Right in front of him she stripped down to her underwear, and walked over to the closet to find a pair of his pajamas. It was like he was not there at all, like he was a worm, or a bug crawling across the floor, or perhaps a mole.  
  
When she managed to squeeze into them, she had to undo the buttons around her chest and keep the rest buttoned very loosely. “So much for not having a womanly figure…” Izaya said aloud without meaning to.

She reached for his eyelids and put two fingers around them. “Is it okay if I gauge both of your eyes out? They’ll just grow back, right?”  
  
“You know, I’m not even Seiji so you shouldn’t care about me.”

Namie relaxed with that reminder. “That’s right…” She muttered, as she stood up again to get another bedroll.  
  
Izaya sighed in relief. He wondered where exactly the tension came from though. Perhaps that was the downside of always valuing the unpredictability of humanity. He could always be on the wrong end of that same unpredictability. “You don’t have to sleep in the same room as me.” He said just as she had finished laying out her bedroll.

“Your condition might worsen in the middle of the night. I have no idea how ghoul healing works, and if it’ll completely overcome the symptoms of shock…” The moment she laid down she had already begun to feel tired. It was not even that late in the day, it was merely dark because it was still raining. She wondered why it felt like all of the emotions had drained out of her.  
  
It was probably Izaya’s fault. His mere presence was like a curse. He would not even let her go to sleep either. He asked one question out of the blue. “Namie, if all you want is a sense of family then why do you keep chasing Seiji? You have to realize you’ll never get it from him. I’m not talking about your twisted definition of love, he’s never going to love you like a normal sibling either.”

As usual, Izaya liked to slap people in the face with such plain truths, and then dictate their feelings to them as if he knew their every thought. Namie had been confused by this part of him at first but she slowly grew used to him. It was like cat owners who got used to their cats constantly mewling for attention. “It’s not really that important how Seiji feels, I just want to continue loving Seiji.”  
  
Izaya snorted. Then he shook in pain from his own laughter once more. “You know you’re exactly like him. It must run in the blood. You love him the same way he loves that head.”  
  
“Yeah I know, why do you think that head annoys me that much? Do you really make that much money as an information broker selling such obvious information.” She snapped back at him.  
  
Izaya went quiet for a moment. It seemed neither of what he just said was what he wanted to say at all, so now he was carefully choosing his words. “You’re beautiful you know that?” Izaya said a moment later reaching out to touch her hair. It was quite literally the last thing she expected him to say. A genuine compliment from Orihara Izaya it made her skin crawl. Still, she did not know what to say. If only there were words to better express her urge to vomit. “I’m not trying to flatter you, it’s just an objective fact I observed. Oh, that sounds like I’m a creepy guy in one of those office place romantic novels. What I mean to say is…” She wondered why he was fumbling with his words. “If you wanted to you could make any man easily fall for you. You’re brilliant, beautiful, and the way you tend to love you devote your entire self to one person. There are men who trick themselves into thinking they want that sort of thing. Even if you didn't want to spend the rest of your life with a man though, you could just have a child and leave him. That child would be a normal family too, the same kind you crave.”

Izaya explained this all methodically. He did not seem to be doing it to rub it in her face for once how this normal life would always elude her. Rather, he was genuinely curious. Izaya looked at her, no he looked at all humans the same way with those eyes. He loved them. He wanted to see every single face they made. Obsessively, irrationally.

“If you stopped loving humans, you wouldn’t be so lonely Izaya. You could make ghoul friends, or, you could probably even find a few humans who would sympathize with you under the CCG’s iron fist. You’re handsome and charistmatic, people are always trying to throw happiness at you and beg you to love them.” Namie explained as calmly as she could, the same way that he did. “So why can’t you stop?”

“It’s because… I’m Izaya Orihara… and I love humans.” Izaya Orihara was an existence that loved humans, it was as simple as that. If he had been born a human, he would have still loved humans. If he had been born a grey man from outer space, he'd travel across the universe to fall in love with them again. His motivations could not be explained by simple mechanisms of self loathing and projection.   
  
“That’s exactly it… what would we be without our obsessions.” Namie wanted to end the conversation right there. She knew, when he said she was just like her brother, what he meant to say was he was just like him. She had no such desire to sympathize with this man though, to feel even more connected, no matter how astonishing it was that Izaya would attempt to relate to another human being in the first place. Namie thought of something and chuckled. “You love them so much you eat them, don’t you?”

Izaya frowned. Maybe if he started to pout again she could get some sleep. “I don’t want to eat you, and I love you still. I love that obsessive nature that makes you, you. WIthout it, you’d be tedious and dull.”  
  
“You were just trying to persuade me to get rid of it.”  
  
“Well, I still wanted to see what would happen if you did.”

“Scum…” She muttered. Now she should really end the conversation she thought. However, quite foolishly, she continued to talk. “Izaya…” _Izaya, Izaya_ . “Do you really think I’m beautiful?” She asked, almost innocently.  
  
“Of course, why would you even ask that?”  
  
“I’ve never seen a man notice my beauty before.” Namie said. “Besides, I lost to a head so I must not be that attractive face wise, at least that was my logic.”

“It’s because you only pay attention to that brother of yours, jeez. I’m an information broker you know, I’ll charge even if you ask me stupid questions.” He sighed, but then, a familiar bad habit of his reared its ugly head. “Have you seriously never been with another guy before?”

Namie shook her head in her pillow. “Perhaps there was a scientific curiosity I had about such a thing, but I never cared enough to try.”  
  
“Namie, are you a virgin?” He asked suddenly. It was apparent, he wanted her to say it out loud like some kind of sick freak.  
  
Namie gritted her teeth. “What use could you possibly have for that information?”

“Hey, Hey, Namie. If you really wanted to, I’d let you do it to me.”

Namie’s brows furrowed in confusion. She felt her cheeks growing hot, but suddenly threw her head into the pillow trying to ignore him. Of course, that only encouraged a terrible man like Izaya to continue being terrible.  
  
“Namie, Namie. You could just close your eyes the entire time and pretend it was Seiji. I’m not trying to harass you into doing it or anything, I don’t desire you as an individual, I just think it’d be fun to watch is all. Namie… are you listening to me? If you tell me no clearly, I’ll never ask again, but I want to hear you say it.”

Her face had gotten so red she felt herself a second away from explosion. Suddenly she stood up again and just like the time Izaya had tackled her she moved on top of him, and planted her lips upon his to shut him up. The kiss was tense, and more like a wrestling between two individuals than anything romantic.

When they finally broke they stared at one another. Izaya was the first to speak (like always) “That wasn’t a yes or a no. You should speak clearly.”

Namie brought her head down and lightly tapped his forehead against his. “Yes… I’ll use you. Do you really want to do it with me, though?”

“Of course I do. I love…” She did not even let him finish before kissing him again. Perhaps she did not want to hear the end of that sentence. The reminder that even if a terrible man like Izaya fell in love with her, once again she would still be second to the entirety of humanity.

Perhaps she was cursed to be a jealous and cold woman forever. However, right now her body felt warm. She closed her eyes just as she instructed but… _Izaya, Izaya, Izaya_ … no matter how much she tried to shut him out she could not picture Seiji. Only Izaya was here, Izaya who kissed her, who touched her, Izaya’s warmth was against hers, trying futiley to melt her ice cold body.

\--

In the morning she woke up with half of her clothes torn off sloppily, next to a naked Izaya. It took her a moment to process everything that had happened in the last day.

  
It was amazing really, the number of bad decisions that led her to this moment. First she decided to throw everything away and obsessively work on her severed head. Then she abandoned her company. Then she went to work with the most dangerous and unreliable man in Ikebukuro. She started to become closer to him. She saved him when he was horribly injured. When she learned he was a ghoul she did not run away. Then, the same night the two previous things had happened, she had decided to have sex with him.  
  
When Izaya woke up, he rolled over clutching at his stomach. “I think I tore a muscle or something…”  
  
“I told you it was a bad idea to do that last night, it might reopen your wounds.”  
  
“Then why did you go along with it?” He snapped back at her.  
  
“It’s because I don’t really care that much about your suffering.” She shrugged, and went looking again for her original clothes.  
  
Even though something like that had happened between them, they casually like two puzzle pieces slipped back into their old misshapen relationship.

That afternoon because Izaya insisted upon being around her in case her uncle showed up again, they went to visit a fellow information broker in the fourteenth ward together.  
  
The moment they descended into the bar named helter skelter a woman with bright red hair smiled at them. “Oh! Izayacchi! What did you bring me today, a tasty meal?”  
  
“She’s my secretary. She’s just here to watch and make sure you don’t try to swindle me like normal.”

Itori stood up, and immediately went to Namie. She stood between the two, and suddenly wrapped them both in her arms in an overly affectionate gesture and sniffed both. Her face became incredibly smug, it was an expression Namie had seen on Izaya’s face countless times.  
  
“Oh. I didn’t know you had that specific fetish, Izayacchi!”

Izaya’s face immediately turned red. Namie looked away.

“I should tell Shizuo that you’re cheating on him with a secretary! Haha! What a cliche.”

This was a bad idea, Namie realized finally.  
  
Bad idea, stacked upon bad idea, all leading her to this point. Now she was choking back anger, embarrassment and denial while a clown laughed at her in the background.  For some reason though, she didn’t particularly regret any of it.


End file.
